Bagnall published this in The London Magazine, an illustrated monthly largely aimed at middle-class women. Her story of aristocratic romance and excavation in Egypt is given a surprising twist by introducing Akhenaten and Nefertiti - the first time, to my knowledge, that they appear as characters in fiction. The aristocratic Egyptologist, Paul Vyning, son of the suitably named Lord Quest, goes out to Egypt to dig and encounters the beautiful and elegant Claudia Forrest. He sees her standing 'like a tall blue gentian, in a simple dress of native cotton, vivid against the burning yellow of the cliffs'. Before they have been long in conversation, Paul asks Claudia whether she believes in reincarnation. Perhaps they had both been in Egypt before, he suggests, ' "in the days when England was infested with unpleasant people with blue skins, before blue blood was thought anything of'', but she is sceptical. Shortly after, inexplicable supernatural things happen when Paul and Claudia play the parts of Akhenaten and Nefertiti in an amateur theatrical held in the Valley of the Kings - an incident shamelessly stolen by Bagnall from one of Weigall's favourite stories.13 Claudia begins to think that there may be something in reincarnation after all. The denouement comes when she and Paul visit the tombs in the western Valley of the Kings, excavated a few years earlier. Here they are trapped in a tomb, nearly killed by a rockfall, and encounter a terrifying spectre of Akhenaten's successor Ay. Paul and Claudia manage to escape, and confcss their love for each other after realising that they had indeed lived in Egypt before, as Akhenaten and Nefertiti. The greatest love story of the ages, Bagnall implies, will never die.
Desert romances like Bagnall's were pretty hackneyed even in 1910, though they remained popular (see Figure 6.2). Comedy rather than romance is more apparent in the next significant fictional treatment of Akhenaten: Henry Rider Haggard's long story Smith and the Pharaohs, serialised over three issues of The Strand Magazine in 1912-13. Haggard was very interested in Akhenaten. He owned rings inscribed with Akhenaten's cartouche - one of which he gave to Rudyard Kipling - and visited Amarna, though he was disappointed with what he saw. (His reactions are quoted on p. 71.) Given Haggard's interest in
Figure 6.2 Cartoon by George Morrow from Punch, 9 May 1923, at the height of'Tutmania'. © Punch Ltd.
collecting, the museum is a suitable setting for the epiphany with Akhenaten in Smith and the Pharaohs. Smith, an amateur Egyptologist, stays behind in the museum after closing time to look at the mummified bodies of the pharaohs. It turns out that this night is the one night of the year when they come to life and converse. All the most famous rulers are there, including the 'long-necked' Akhenaten (Haggard uses Petrie's form Khu-en-Aten) lecturing Ramesses II 'in a high, weak voice'. Haggard presents him as a valetudinarian bore who drones on about his religious theories, parodying the stereotype of the mystic bore, a stock character in late Victorian and Edwardian satire.14 He is also, I think, poking fun at Weigall's earnest Akhenaten. In Haggard's tale, Akhenaten bores Ramesses so much that he urges him go away and tell another pharaoh about monotheism:
'I will talk with him', answered Khu-en-Aten. 'It is more than possible we may agree on certain points. Meanwhile, let me explain to to your Majesty -'
'Oh, I pray you, not now. There is my wife.'
'Your wife?' said Khu-en-Aten, drawing himself up. 'Which wife? I am told that your Majesty had many and left a large family; indeed, I see some hundreds of them here to-night. Now, I - but let me introduce Nefertiti to your Majesty. I may explain that she was my only wife.'
'So I have understood. Your Majesty was rather an invalid, were you not? Of course, in those circumstances, one prefers the nurse whom one can trust.'15
As in Bagnall's story, what is notable here is how much knowledge about Akhenaten is presupposed for the satire to work. Haggard assumes that the readers of The Strand Magazine know about Akhenaten's religious reforms, his supposed physical deformity and his devotion to Nefertiti. Weigall certainly succeeded in giving Akhenaten and Nefertiti distinct characters for the non-specialist.
